For the Love of Food

My husband loves sweet salad dressings. I, on the other hand, love savory vinegar-based dressings. But, unlike many American families, we don’t have multiple bottles of salad dressing in our refrigerator so that everyone can use the dressing of their choice on their salad. Here we make a fresh salad dressing every meals, and most of the time they are vinegar and herb based.

And, since we can’t get American bottled salad dressings here, we have to make our own. My husband found this recipe the other day, and he modified it by making it with tomato paste instead of ketchup and upping the vinegar – and I bottled it

Enjoy it on your next salad! Continue Reading »

Sometimes I need to throw together a really quick meal – like on cleaning day when I have to spend 8 hours cleaning our home …all those toys (and having to pick them up over and over again because of my 1-year-olds “help”) leave little time for an elaborate meal.

But, that doesn’t meal that I’m about to go and call the pizza man. I want a real meal that will not leave me wishing I’d eaten something else.

So, I went ahead and bought myself a package of pre-made spaetzel, which is the equivalent of buying fresh noodles in your grocer’s refrigerated section, and cooked up some pork steaks with chentrelle mushrooms and caramelized onions. You can also make delicious homemade spaetzle – I have a great recipe in a cookbook that “we” (my husband is the spaetzle cooker in our home) always go to.  There are plenty of recipes online, but if anyone wants my recipe, I’d be more than happy to share – just lease a comment.

All in all, the meal takes about 30 minutes from start to finish, but you can cut the time to 20 minutes if you leave our the chantrelle mushrooms and caramelized onions – or sauté them in a separate griddle (should you have two) while cooking the rest of the meal. And, if you need to further reduce your cooking time, you can pound your steak out with a meat hammer and reduce cooking time to 5 minutes a side.

Here is my great pork steak recipe: Continue Reading »

I always feel a bit down when Summer comes to an end. No more strawberries, blueberries, watermelons….you know what I mean.

But, just because the delicious fruits of summer have been put to rest for the year, doesn’t mean that Fall has nothing to offer. Not only does the Fall season offer a variety of delicious fruits; many of them, when fresh picked, will last for months on end in a dark, cool, dry places – like your basement.

By the time New Years rolls around, many of us are quite frustrated with ourselves and our winter-obsession with sweets. Today I want to share with you a “method” I like to use to convince my family to eat healthy.

We are all drawn to food by it’s visual appeal – or repelled by it’s lack of it. I like to arrange fruit on a platter and set it out on the dinner table where everyone can just grab some at their will. Everyone gets excited about how nice the platter looks – then they start sneaking pieces when I’m not looking. By the time the end of the day has come, I have a half empty platter that I refill and rearrange much to everyone’s delight.

So, how do you go about arranging a beautiful platter to fruit that will have everyone’s mouth watering? Continue Reading »